Post by TheShadow on Apr 10, 2006 18:52:05 GMT -5
sanantonio.bizjournals.com
Los Angeles Business from bizjournals
Los Angeles developer Lewis Wolff, managing partner of the Oakland Athletics, is on the hunt for a ballpark site.
Wolff led the investment team that bought the team for $180 million last year.
In a wide-ranging March 30 interview with editors and reporters, Wolff said he is pondering sites in the East Bay. Several sites in Fremont are on the list, including a 140-acre parcel west of Interstate 880 that is under a long-term lease to Cisco Systems Inc. Wolff also is considering downtown San Jose.
Do you have a deadline for when you want to be in a new ballpark?
Somewhere between today and indefinitely is our date. We're looking. We need a site. We have a great ballpark design, but we don't have a site.
If you're going to Fremont, you're going to need more parking than you would if you were going to downtown San Jose.
Correct. You know, the Coliseum is a fairly good deal. It's got all the attributes you want. It's got parking. It's near the airport. It's got freeways and a BART station. The problem is, it's got a lot of debt and it's got two of us playing in the same ballpark. We want our own ballpark, and I'm sure the (Oakland) Raiders want to be in their own, too.
Have you had discussions with Cisco about their Fremont site?
Yes. We've had discussions with everybody and their brother from San Jose to Portland. As far as the specifics, there's more than one site in Fremont. And it's really up to Cisco to talk about that one.
Can you contrast the positives and negatives of Fremont and San Jose? If you had your druthers?
It's not a question of druthers. No. 1, we don't have any (territorial) rights to go to San Jose. And I haven't been trying to break that. It's really up to the (San Francisco) Giants (who control those rights).
The commissioner (Bud Selig) and I are fraternity brothers. We go back a long way, but he's not going to do me a favor any more than for the other 29 other people he serves.
What would a new ballpark mean for the A's?
We're not trying to do one of the retro ballparks, and we're not trying to copy (Baltimore's) Camden Yards, which is beautiful. We're trying to do something lasting and different.
One person asked me last night, "Well, give me an example of where we can see what you're doing." And I said, "If that's the goal, then I'll never do anything new."
When I came to San Jose early on, there was an (entrepreneurial) attitude that we didn't care if it hadn't been done before. We don't need somebody to say, "Oh, it was done over here in Tucson, therefore we can do it here." That kind of attitude has got to come back to the cities that I deal with.
What has to happen next?
We have to work out a land transaction. We're going to have to cross rivers we've never crossed before, before we do something dramatic.
I don't want to speculate, but there are opportunities outside the state of California. Other teams are looking at other cities. But we're comfortable where we're at. We want to stay here and we're working hard to do that.